Emotional Pedagogy

Book excerpt: For many years, teachers and educators question themselves about their pedagogic method. Nevertheless, it is possible that the questions one is asking, however pertinent, may be incomplete in that they only cover one aspect of the entire mechanism involved in the learning process. What we realized is that a high percentage of the teaching approaches, and consequently their evaluations, are essentially cognitive. The reason for this is simply because it is said that the learning process is fundamentally cognitive, i.e., that it basically lies on activities involving the treatment of information. Therefore, we can logically conclude that in such instances where a student is struggling to learn, the problem must be cognitive in nature. In this book, we will take a different position or approach. By no means do we mean to imply that the approach that looks to cognitive methodology for learning issues is irrelevant, but instead we feel that it is insufficient and may not address all of the questions related to the learning process and all of the difficulties attached to it. Therefore, we will shift the focus onto a different area of analysis that addresses other parts of the brain, themselves linked to the development of emotional skills. One of the main objectives of this work is essentially to provide us with primary basic theoretical elements of a new vision on teaching and learning. Another logical objective would be to propose tangible and integrated applications of emotional intelligence in our teaching strategies. It is precisely for these reasons, and many more, that this book presents a novel method for understanding learning and teaching processes, a method we call emotional pedagogy, its premise asserting that one's ability to learn can be directly linked to one's emotional awareness.